"So you faint at the sight of blood?" he asked. This seemed to entertain him. I didn't answer. I closed my eyes again and fought the nausea with all my strength, clamping my lips together. "And not even your own blood," he continued, enjoying himself.
There's a double meaning going on here, of course: to Edward, blood is perfectly common to him as his sole source of food. Even if he only feeds once a week, that means he sees and consumes blood about as often as some Americans eat pizza (including myself, since we have Pizza Weekends at the Mardoll house). So the idea of someone who faints at the sight, smell, or mere mention of blood is a novelty to him. Then, also, there's the foreshadowing that Bella is going to want to become a vampire in the very near future. She's a person who is sickened by blood, and yet wants to modify her body to the point that she can only be sustained by consuming blood on a regular basis. How will that work? Tension!

Interestingly enough, though, I think this works well with the theory of an Otherkin!Bella, if we apply the theory brought up in the comments that if vertigo can be the result of a brain saying jump!, then perhaps Bella's nausea can be seen as the result of a brain saying feed! in a seemingly inappropriate situation. I like this idea, because it fits my preference for Twilight to be less the story of a girl pursuing an unhealthy relationship with a vampire, and more the story of a girl working with and around an unhealthy relationship to become a vampire. So I'm still clinging to that.

But even though this exchange is apparently meant to be cutesy foreshadowing, I can't help but point out that Edward Not-As-Seventeen-As-He-Looks Cullen is having a really lovely time at Bella's expense and that makes him a jerk in my book. Again. Once again, this guy is a trained doctor at least two times over. I'm shocked and reviled by the idea of a doctor who is less interested in distracting the patient until a moment of pain, nausea, and faintness has passed and more interested in amusing themselves with a contemplation of the patient's unusual symptoms. Nice to see the Carlisle Compassion hasn't rubbed off on the boy genius here. If we later see a copy of the Hippocratic Oath anywhere near Edward's accolades and diplomas, I'm going to drop dead from irony overdose.

I hope -- I really hope -- that this Jerky Edward is done on purpose, that this is supposed to underscore his inability to sympathize with non-vampire people. I would actually kind of like something done deliberately like that, a concerted attempt on the part of the author to point out the complete fail of Edward and other doctors like him. If this is meant to showcase that a lifetime of medical training can be immediately undone by an all-pervading sense of contempt for other people, then well done!

But... in order for that to work, I think we'd have to see some kind of growth on Edward's part towards learning to care for all people and not just for Causes-Special-Feelings-In-My-Bathing-Suit-Area Bella. From a literary standpoint, you can't morally redeem a character by having them practice token acceptance -- their new-found compassion and sense of community has to reach beyond the one person on earth they've decided is their soul-mate, in order for it to have any real meaning.

"She's just a little faint," he reassured the startled nurse. "They're blood typing in Biology." The nurse nodded sagely. "There's always one." He muffled a snicker.

The nurse is trying to comfort Bella and reassure her that she's not unusual or weak to feel faint -- that this is a yearly occurrence. Edward... finds this hilarious. I don't even know why this is amusing.

This is not advanced psychological stuff here; Edward's scholastic training should have covered at least a basic introductory psychology course. Heck, even if he hasn't had a lick of psychology training, he should have at least seen a good bedside manner at work before now. Doesn't graduate training in medicine also include observation periods? Shouldn't he have at least observed and possibly helped Carlisle at various points over the last century? A huge part of medicine isn't just treating the symptoms, it' treating the source.

Bella is on the verge of fainting, and stress and tension are exactly the sorts of things that can push her over the edge into unconsciousness. Getting her calmed down as quickly as possible -- by, for example, reassuring her that her fainting is normal and won't make her a social outcast at the school and that Everything Is Going To Be Okay -- is a huge part of treating the source of her fainting, rather than just the symptoms by having her lie down for awhile. This nurse is practicing medicine, without even having touched or examined Bella. Edward, whose education supposedly surpasses this nurse's by so much, is actually hindering Bella's recovery by continuing to be a stressor in her environment.

"Just lie down for a minute, honey; it'll pass." "I know," I sighed. The nausea was already fading. "Does this happen a lot?" she asked. "Sometimes," I admitted. Edward coughed to hide another laugh.

Now the nurse has noted that Bella knows more about fainting than her usual patients, and she is concerned and questions Bella as to how often this happens. Again, fainting on a regular basis is not usual and can be indicative of a serious underlying health problem. This nurse actually cares about her patient. Edward, the official doctor in the room, is still cracking up at the idea of his not-quite-girlfriend dropping like a goat at regular intervals.

"You can go back to class now," she told him. "I'm supposed to stay with her." He said this with such assured authority that -- even though she pursed her lips -- the nurse didn't argue it further.

Oh my gosh. Nameless Nurse, you are the heroine of this novel. You reassured Bella. You tried to help diagnose her medical condition and fix it. You stood up to Edward Cullen and told him he could get his smirking butt back to class. I love you, Nameless Nurse. Someone get this woman some fanfic, stat!

Unfortunately, this is Twilight and -- as Amarie has so beautifully pointed out -- you cannot pull rank on Edward Cullen in Twilight. Edward Cullen is the absolute personification of authority: he's the whitest white, the richest rich, the most desirable male, the one with the highest education. The only authority a woman can have over Edward Cullen is the authority that he grants her out of love, the authority of Mother Esme and Wife Bella. But good on you, Nameless Nurse, for trying. Bless your heart.

It's hard for me to read this and not feel like we're reading yet another Verna scene, but localized for Twilight values. There are three people in this scene: Nurse, Bella, and Edward. Edward, as an educated white male, is asserting his privilege by consistently snickering and treating the entire situation as comical to him. But who is he snickering at?

Ultimately, I think the answer to that question is that he is snickering at them both. I think Edward's obvious contempt throughout this scene is an invitation for one of the other players to join him in his privilege at the expense of the other. The Nurse is being offered the chance to join in with a little wink-wink-nudge-nudge with Edward and smirk at how weak and helpless Bella is. Just imagine! Fainting at the sight of blood! We educated professionals know better! Edward and the Nurse would never faint at the sight of blood. Let's collectively dismiss Bella by sneering at her.

Or, alternately, Bella can join in with Edward and direct his mocking at the Nurse. So serious! Doesn't she already know that Bella is fine because if there was a real need to be worried, Bella would know, as would the highly educated Edward? So solicitous! Aren't her attempts at comforting Bella so generic, so canned, so boring-banal-adult? And -- not to be mean, but let's all be honest here -- so uneducated! Do school nurses even have degrees? Edward has at least two. Let's bond by snickering over the Nurse.

Edward is offering these two women a choice: they are unprivileged compared to him, but they can join him in his privilege, but only by putting down the other one. He's comfortable in his divisiveness -- even if both women reject him and stand against him, he's still the figure of authority here because this is the world of Twilight. The Nurse has no power to send him out of her office because he can claim with authority that a male teacher told him to stay with Bella. Bella has no power to send him out of her presence because his beauty and glamor undermines any conviction in her "no"s.

A major problem with Edward is that when he laughs, he laughs from a position of power. Good humor is about poking fun at the oppressors, and about using the power of laughter to undermine toxic social structures. Laughing at people who are under you, simply for the fact that they have less power, less education, worse health, or are more vulnerable than you isn't humor. It's mockery.

And it's only funny if you buy into the idea that people who aren't Edward deserve to be mocked.

87
comments:

I still can't believe that this guy is supposed to be the essence of male desirability. Unless he caters to women with a humiliation fetish? Help me out here.

I mean just damn, what a Jackass. Not that Bella is much better. She has contempt for almost everyone who is not a sparklie-poo as well. She just doesn't spend as much time and effort on being a dirk (a mix between a dick and a jerk. My own word. Patent pending).

So it would seem that according to Twilight, its not a problem to have overweening contempt for those around you. Its only a problem if you have contempt for the wrong, special people.

Also, this probably belonged in the last thread, but I am kicking myself I didn't write in there.

See, you were talking about how Twilight reinforces toxic narratives in our culture. It strongly reminded me of a time when my older sister was waxing rhapsodic about the scene where Jacob demands to know if Bella has any feelings for him and she demurs and then he forces a kiss on her. Of course, this being Twilight, Bella likes it afterwards.

The thing is, my sister earlier shared something that happened at college, where a guy she had no feelings for forced a kiss on her. It was quite unpleasant, to say the least. When I reminded her of this, she was like, "well, yeah..." with that hidden "but" unsaid.

So in other words, my sister was willing to indulge in the "hotness" of Jacob's assault on Bella while having experience that directly contradicted such a notion. She was willing to believe Twilight over her own lying eyes.

Very minor thing as Twilight goes, but it really stands out to me that Edward is lying when he overrules the nurse in her own office with the authority of Mr. "wtf why does the incredible hulk get to overrule the nurse on medical issues when his cover is as a science teacher" Banner. Mr. Banner has no idea that Edward is there and we've already seen Edward as completely dismissive of Mr. Hulk's authority because he overruled Banner to send Mike back to class.

By the Lords of Kobol, what the hell is Cullen's problem? I haven't had a day of medical education in my entire life, and don't have any plans to (maybe dentistry in the future) but even I'm vaguely aware that it's probably not a good idea to snicker, mock and belittle the patient in front of her goddamn face.

It's at least as bad witnessing his crap as realizing in a visceral way that he will never be effectively stood up to by anybody in the entire damned series. (People like Hero Nurse try, but, being both a minor NPC, a school nurse, and a -woman-, most critically, stand no chance against his Sex Appeal.) Especially his primary victim, Bella. You'd think that, being wish fulfillment fantasy, you'd see the main character standing up to her bully at some point and telling him to frak himself, but no, she just eventually gets married to him.

It's not even like that was SMeyer's message; she's probably so frakked that she can't even see nine-tenths of the problems you, in particular, have outlined so well. It's the same kind of 'are we in the same species?' moment of complete alien thought that you get when you see Left Behind II: Tribulation Force mention casually, in the opening, how every child in the world has vanished and then proceeds to show us a world fundamentally unchanged by the Event at all.

(Speaking of sociopathy, don't go thinking Bella is good merely because she has just cause as far as the eye can see to hate this lump of sparkling marble and contempt.Our main topic today is aforementioned lump, however.)

(Even if this was meant to cater to a dominance or humiliation etc. desire in some fashion, it is still a complete failure. Fantasies are Fine, no matter what they are, being fantasies, but there's a way to do things and there's a way not to do things.)

I think the positive explanation for Edward's behaviour here has to do with genre expectations.

This is a wish-fulfilment romance rather than serious literature, and isn't intended to be anything else. In a romance, there are a couple of things applicable to this situation that you can rely on:

1. The hero and heroine have an instinctive intimacy even when they're at odds.

The fact that Edward is laughing at both women in the situation implies that he has (or at least thinks he has) an understanding of the situation that's beyond theirs. Since the situation concerns her, the idea that he has an understanding that eludes even Bella can be read as a promise that he'll do the 'understanding her better than she understands herself' thing later on. It doesn't really work if you read the scene too carefully, but if you're just skimming it, the knowing laugh up the hero's sleeve is a familiar marker of alpha-maledom and prospective matehood. Margaret Mitchell was a master of it,* and Gone With The Wind is such an influence on romance that, while I'm no romance buff, I have the impression that the mocking-yet-accepting laugh is a trope romance readers can quickly recognise. It's rather awkwardly applied here, but a wish-fulfilment reader is probably going to read it as a general signifier rather than a detailed piece of psychology.

2. Real suffering only happens about relationships.

The heroine can suffer anguish because her (former, unworthy) partner left her, leaving a broken heart that the hero will mend. She can suffer anguish because she's realised the loves the hero but thinks she's lost him. She can suffer about other things too - but those sufferings only really exist to propel the plot. If they were serious enough that love wouldn't cure them, the romance would be a downer and fail to deliver on the promise of its genre. The upshot is that only romantic problems can be really serious, because they're the only serious problems that a new and better romance can fix.

Hence, Bella's suffering here is implicitly understood not to be a serious matter. She herself speaks of it more in terms of irritation and embarrassment than any deeper emotion, and this is because she's reacting to the scene with a certain amount of authorial knowledge: she herself is sort of aware that only romantic problems are worth her taking seriously. Add to that the fact that she has a kind of compulsion to martyr herself, which goes with the basic assumption that unpleasant experiences don't matter when they happen to her.

When you put all that together, and Edward's laugh is a laugh of understanding, leavened by the fact that her suffering isn't - in this kind of book, can't be - serious.

*I feel that every time I mention her name I must stress that her racism was appalling and I do not wish to endorse it in any way, shape or form.

*I feel that every time I mention her name I must stress that her racism was appalling and I do not wish to endorse it in any way, shape or form.

I understand. :)

There seems to be a strong correlation with racism in romance novels* that we've been talking about lately. You and others have noted the contrast between the cool in-control lover and the hot passionate "love chooses for me" lover who is frequently of dark skin. And I'm still reeling from your excellent point that imprinting is basically what Edward/Bella have, but with a very different word and connotation and that changes EVERYTHING. Very fascinating.

(* The Occam's Razor explanation, of course, being that we are in a racist society and that seeps over into our literature, rather than, say, there being something inherently wrong with romance as a genre.)

I think it's interesting that "your pain is not serious and therefore is amusing" would be a source of relief. It makes sense in my head, but not so much for me in practice -- I'm one of those "touchy when hurting" people and if I thought someone was laughing at me in a moment of physical weakness, I wouldn't find it endearing. But, as I say, from an intellectual approach I see where it could be a source of relief in the "if it was serious, I wouldn't be laughing, so you're fine" kind of way...

How do you think your first point relates to how much the text repeatedly drives home the fact that Edward doesn't know. So many of Edward's interactions with Bella so far have been characterized by his frustration at his total lack of ability of understand what is going on. We will learn later that this lack of understanding is due to the fact that he cannot read her mind this meaning that Bella is the one person on earth he understands least of all. Or, at least, if not the one person on earth she is definitely the person Edward understands least of all of the people he has ever met in his entire life.

I ask because I don't think you're wrong (I know about as little about romance as a genre as it is possible to know so I'm completely ready to believe there are conventions I know nothing of) but it seems like if the genre is setting us to believe that "The fact that Edward is laughing at both women in the situation implies that he has (or at least thinks he has) an understanding of the situation that's beyond theirs," the text itself is fighting against it because it keeps on coming back to the fact that Edward doesn't understand Bella and is aware to the point of frustration of his lack of understanding.

The Occam's Razor explanation, of course, being that we are in a racist society and that seeps over into our literature, rather than, say, there being something inherently wrong with romance as a genre.

I don't feel that I'm enough of an expert either in the romance genre or in racism to say anything definitive here. I would speculate, though, that romance deals in archetypes, particularly those that influence sexual fantasy, and the line between archetype and stereotype can be very thin...

"So it would seem that according to Twilight, its not a problem to have overweening contempt for those around you. Its only a problem if you have contempt for the wrong, special people."

I have this problem with Andrew Greeley's Nuala Anne McGrail novels, which I enjoy greatly as mind candy but...oh Lord, the problems with them. The books are narrated primarily by Nuala's adoring husband, Dermot, who thinks of her as an Irish warrior goddess. She is a Mary Sue character of epic proportions, and the surest sign of someone's deep and true evil is for them to not like Nuala Anne, or criticize her, or any of her children, in any way. Such a person is not just mistaken, not just jerks, once a person has suggested that, say Nuala isn't a very good singer they are capable of pretty much any evil. And not just in Dermot's mind--the plot will bear this out.

At the same time, Nuala is allowed to 'defend' herself by unloading with both barrels on a mentally ill relative, (her primary symptom being that she criticizes Nuala's parenting), and this merely brings on a great breakthrough where this woman agrees to finally seek counselling.

"Margaret Mitchell was a master of it,* and Gone With The Wind is such an influence on romance that, while I'm no romance buff, I have the impression that the mocking-yet-accepting laugh is a trope romance readers can quickly recognise. It's rather awkwardly applied here, but a wish-fulfilment reader is probably going to read it as a general signifier rather than a detailed piece of psychology."

I think Janet Evanovich does it in a much more appealing way. Than Myers, I mean, not Mitchell.

@Ana "Kirk" derives from the same basic word as 'church'--the Swedish word is kyrkan, the German is kirche, and so on. "Dirk" they seem unsure about, but they think it may be from a German word which also means 'dagger'.

I could see it being a way to apologize for painting someone with the wrong brush. Sort of something to go alongside the idea of painting with too broad a brush, in this case the brush is the right size but it ended up in the wrong place, because your brush is slippery like that.

Given some effort we could possibly immortalize your typo as a figure of speech.

We're not even halfway through this book, and I'm running out of words in any language to describe what kind of person Edward Cullen is. Of course, if you have a few in other languages that I don't have, I'd be more than willing to throw them at him at this point.

Edward continues to laugh while the Heroic Nurse is concerned about her. If I recall correctly, it's Alice with the foresight abilities, who would be in a much better position to say "It won't be a problem. But you really should have doctors examine to see whether you have an inner ear blockage. Might save your life." and have a chuckle at the nurse that's trying to do it the old-fashioned way.

Unless, that is, Edward Cullen finds the idea of caring for someone to be funny/laughable, because in his infinite wisdom, agelessness, and ability to read minds, he's taken a long view that consists mostly of "People are dumb, panicky creatures and you know it." Or has seen his fair share of people professing concern while being resentful, bored or elsewhere in their thinking.

That suggests that, perhaps, every time Edward laughs, it's because he's reading a mind or that he's heard something like that before in his life, and that what's going on mentally is very different than what's going on physically. It makes Edward more of a cynic (but really, no less of a jerk). Of course, if we had a more assertive protagonist, she could angrily confront him about it and ask what was so damn funny, but our Isabella is too awestruck by his beauty to stay mad at him for long, or to carry a coherent thought. And thus, Jerk Cullen is allowed to get away with being a jerk yet again, even though he should theoretically be concerned about the woman he's supposed to be in love with. (He is in love with her at this point, yeh?)

And the nurse, as a school official, should be able to say, "Cullen, she needs to rest. Get. Out. Wait in the anteroom if you have to, but right now, get out of here." And if Edward were in the slightest interested in the masquerade of being a high schooler, he would go. This being Twilight, however, where we've established that the Cullens are Super-Special Snowflakes that nobody, not even Charlie Swan, dare say or do anything to cross, of course, the whims of a seventeen year-old (and his flimsy excuse) over-rule the nurse who theoretically has more experience than he does.

What an insufferable jerk Edward is. And what a missed opportunity. Wouldn't this be the perfect chance for him to demonstrate some genuine concern for someone who's obviously in distress, thus showing Bella there's depths to his character behind the obvious jerkiness? I mean, it would be an easy, cliche way to do it (strong man "rescues" weak woman), but it would be better than this.

Edward being amused by Bella's suffering would be - kind of - salvageable if he'd been established as someone who was amused by his own suffering. People have a tendency to default to what they prefer, if they don't have any other information. And Edward can't read Bella's brain and find out how she prefers to be treated when she's suffering, so... he defaults to his own preference. Laugh at suffering and it diminishes.

A good writer then salvages it more by either having Bella and Edward bond over his having gotten it right. Or over him having gotten it wrong. (This, in my head anyway, involves him sharing some amusing story about how he got hurt some time and made all sorts of bad jokes about it to the medical people/his family while they were treating him. Of course, this requires him to be able to be hurt. At the risk of sounding sadistic*, it's so much easier to humanize people who can be harmed - injured, humiliated, saddened, what have you. It's hard to relate to people who are untouchable because we aren't.)

Except we haven't gotten that characterization.

The more I think about it, the only consistent thing about Edward's character is that he's a jick. No, wait, I'm not sure even that's been consistent. Wasn't he all sympathetic to Bella's pain at having come to Forks? Why was that worth sympathy, but her fainting at the sight of blood is funny?

The more I think about it, the only consistent thing about Edward's character is that he's a jick. No, wait, I'm not sure even that's been consistent. Wasn't he all sympathetic to Bella's pain at having come to Forks? Why was that worth sympathy, but her fainting at the sight of blood is funny?

Can we make it fit the up-thread theory that Emotional Pain Is Real but Physical Pain Is Not?

Kinda. I hesitate because fainting doesn't really involve pain. That's not to say it's all fun, sunshine, and puppy dogs, but it doesn't hurt. (And I was quite capable of dropping like a goat for fifteen or so years of my life. Experience, I haz it.) Okay, feeling queazy isn't pleasant, but it still seems a world away from pain. Mostly, it's just drattedly inconvenient.

Emotional Sensations Are Real but Physical Sensations Are Not? Except then they spend all that time sniffing each other. Hmph.

Was he sympathetic? I remember him being confused about it, having a powerful need to know, jumping to incorrect conclusions, and finally saying that he assumed she suffered more than she let on, but I don't remember any thing that really seemed like sympathy. More like he saw her as a puzzle in need of solving with "You put on a good show, but I'd be willing to bet you're suffering more than you let anyone see," being his solution.

Soon afterward we get this:"Am I annoying you?" he asked. He sounded amused.

Which doesn't really sound like sympathy to me, it seems more like same old Edward.

-

I have the independent film channel on free preview at the moment. Today I saw a movie called D.E.B.S. It is not a good movie by any stretch of the imagination and I'm sure any close reading would find all kinds of problems. One doesn't even have to look that close, when one of the leads wants to see the other she breaks into lead B's room while lead B is sleeping (wow, sound familiar? did not think of that before) and eventually, after lead B points a crossbow at her, ends up getting hold of the crossbow and using it to make lead B come with her. There are so many problems with that that I'm not even going to try to address.

But the reason the movie worked is that there was a definite sense that Lead A and Lead B liked each other. The love at first sight that was going on in all its extremely problematic glory actually seemed to involve genuine affection and that allowed me to forgive massive heaping problems with everything else. (The fact that it was a comedy helped too.)

I wish the same thing could be said about most of the friendships in the movie (one of them I could believe was an actual friendship, the others not so much.)

Anyway, the point in bringing up this movie is that it really drove home for me how little it takes to make me, personally, accept a romance. If Edward and Bella actually showed some sorts of signs of caring about each other I think I'd have little problem letting everything else slide. The problem is, there's really no indication these two even like each other. In fact, they seem to actively dislike each other.

Sounds like I misremembered. Right, then, Edward's only consistent characterization is that he's a jick. And hoo boy is he.

I have trouble remembering exactly how things went in Twilight because I just can't relate, attach, whatever the right word is to either Bella or Edward. Without any kind of emotional investment, my brain keeps marking it for deletion. I don't know if it's bad writing, exactly, or if I am just completely and utterly not the target audience. (Well, I know I'm not the target audience, as I'm not and have never been a teenage girl.)

Actually, I think I'm rather put off by the subgenre Twilight belongs to. I tried to read The Hollow (http://www.amazon.com/Hollow-Trilogy-Jessica-Verday/dp/1416978933) which I'd heard a few good things about, but I couldn't get into it. I don't want to read about girl falls for mysterious boy and investigates mysterious stuff. Something about a person falling in love with an unknown quantity just puts me off. I'd much rather read about an ordinary girl falling for an ordinary boy while they investigate mysterious stuff together. (Replace with two girls, two boys, etc.) Romance must involve togetherness to appeal to me.

I have never heard anyone feel obliged to mention, when talking about, e.g., Homer or Wilkie Collins (now there's a pair that doesn't belong in the same breath!), that they don't endorse the sexism.

It definitely can be strange coming from a position of working with things like Homer and Vergil and Petronius and Juvenal to hear people feel the need to distance themselves from authors for problematic things. Homer is full of misogyny and slavery and think what they did to the cyclops. I'm not saying Polyphemus was a great guy but they came into his house, stole his stuff, and eventually blinded him and killed all his beloved sheep while escaping retribution by the power of puns. And they were the good guys.

Yet I've never seen people feel the need to mention that they don't support the values in these things.

-

@Depizan

That was an honest question, by the way. I cracked open the book to get accurate quotations, but I didn't reread the whole conversation with an eye towards whether or not he was sympathetic. And even if I had done that I'd be open to the possibility I just missed it.

Now hang on, there, it sounds like you're misrembering the story. Odysseus and his men went into Polyphemus' cave and ate some of his food, but they brought a gift, so no real foul there. When Polyphemus comes back, Odysseus claims hospitality. Hospitality, at the time, is a really big deal, tied closely in to piety. Instead of granting the hospitality, Polyphemus kills and eats two of Odysseus's men, then seals the rest inside his cave. Later on, he kills and eats four more of the men. When they blind him, they're just trying to get out of his cave alive. And they don't kill his sheep, they just use them to escape.So Polyphemus is pure villain from beginning to end, and Odysseus never commits any real wrong during that episode.

Also, is Homer full of misogyny and slavery, or does he just present the world as he knew it? Even a modern writer is going to present the ancient Greek labor force as slaves, because that's what they were. There's a world of difference between showing heroes with slaves in a time of slavery, and putting in some kind of thematic content arguing that slavery is a wonderful institution and slaves are absolutely thrilled with their lot.

"Also, is Homer full of misogyny and slavery, or does he just present the world as he knew it? Even a modern writer is going to present the ancient Greek labor force as slaves, because that's what they were. There's a world of difference between showing heroes with slaves in a time of slavery, and putting in some kind of thematic content arguing that slavery is a wonderful institution and slaves are absolutely thrilled with their lot."

I can't read the end of the Odyssey where Odysseus murders the slave women who have been sleeping with the suitors. That seems to me to go beyond 'the world as Homer knows it' simply into sadistic exertion of power against people who are reminder of his shame, and can't fight back.

That said, I think writing about American slavery, not that many years later, is dicier, and Mitchell, in particular, is politically complicated in so many ways. It's different, somehow. You end up fighting with her more.

Given that I don't have a copy of the book at hand, that's far more than I can do. I feel reasonably safe extrapolating from what you quote that he was, in fact, a jick through the whole conversation. (Maybe I shouldn't.)

I've read Twilight once. And have been reading Ana's posts. And, like I said, the book didn't have good mental stickage. It's easy to confuse what a conversation should have been (or was meant to be, but didn't quite manage) with what it was. I think we're supposed to view him as sympathetic to her in that conversation, but that's very different from him actually being presented as sympathetic to her.

I personally feel Margaret Mitchell is a case worth pointing out because, unlike Homer or Collins, she's still fairly current and is often read as a straight romance by her fans. Heck, she was on my school holiday reading list when I was thirteen, and I read the book and totally missed the racism. (Which is extremely embarrassing to admit, but true nonetheless. She's good enough to put one over on the naive white reader.) In addition, while Homer and Collins and lots of other writers displayed some bigotry, Gone With The Wind is practically a tract about why a lifestyle based on slavery is the best way to be and good black people agree. It doesn't just display racism in its writing; it promotes it.

Plus, I'm white, so I don't feel it's my place to take it as read that I don't endorse or fail to notice the racism; plenty of white people do. If a man talked about One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest purely as a political piece of heroism without mentioning the sexism, for instance, he'd make me feel wary of him, and I don't want to do that to anyone else.

I don't feel comfortable mentioning her without condemning the racism. Others may differ, but I just don't like to.

--

Incidentally, I went away and read the old thread, which I'd dropped out of and missed some great stuff. And I read Amarie's piece. And Amarie - wow, you're good. I hope this isn't patronising, but from the viewpoint of a slightly older woman, I really wanted to say that you're a smart and special young woman and I hope you cherish and value yourself as you deserve.

That's more like it! It gets Edward out of the room, it keeps confidentiality, it exposes the shenanigans going on...it's what should be going on. Even if from Bella's perspective, she doesn't see all of what's described there, there's also an opportunity for her to sigh and explain to the nurse that she's been fainting for a very long time, and that there's something about low blood iron or something, and it's all in her medical file that should be at the local hospital, and really, she'll be fine in just a bit.

...this says something about Twilight, or the class of people commenting here, or both, that such problematic scenes can be easily rewritten so as to make both logical sense and to provide more interesting details to the reader, doesn't it?

I agree totally. Homer lived in a world in which slavery was a given. Curiously, that didn't prevent the Homer of the Iliad from having sympathy with slaves--when Achilles commands keening for Patroclus, Homer makes a point of mentioning that the enslaved women dutifully mourned, ostensibly for Patroclus, but each actually for her own sorrows. And of course Andromache expects to be made a slave and knows what that means (although Homer, or possibly Hector-as-presented-by-Homer, glides over the sexual part of it.

Entirely agree that American slavery (slavery by colonial powers in the Americas) is much more fraught, and slavery in areas associated with/controlled by/in the traditional purview of the U.S. is even more fraught because of the insistence upon high ideals. Mitchell should have known better. Heck, Thomas Jefferson should have known better.

I dunno, if I came home to find a bunch of guys had broken into my house and were eating my food (or my pets -- are the sheep food or pets or both), no amount of "Look, we brought you a Limited Edition Jackass DVD!" would cool me down. :/

@Makabit, I'm glad I'm not the only one who hates that bit in the Odyssey. The killing of the servant girls bothers me so much because there's such a privilege gap. I hate hate hate that so many people think it's okay because they were "collaborating" with the suitors. Privilege Does Not Work That Way.

I've posted too many times in a row already, but I had to come in once more to add that that's brilliant! Absolutely perfect. BTW, Dorothy Dunnett does a brilliant job with a similar scene: the male lead, Lymond, takes his injured beloved, who is not yet aware that he's in love with her, to a place where she can receive medical attention; Dunnett makes his dismissal by the caretaker a sensitive and meaningful part of the story. But then, Dunnett is an excellent writer.

Odysseus comes in, takes Poly's stuff, and then decides to stick around to see what else he can get by claiming hospitality. You're right that hospitality was a big deal and Odysseus was within the bounds of that as a Greek, but Poly shows up and says, basically, "Dude, I'm not Greek. This is how we deal with thieves here."

Odysseus's men asked him to leave before Poly got back because they were well aware of what they were doing, Odysseus was sticking around because he wanted more stuff. Yes, he was hoping to get that stuff according to the rules of hospitality as they existed in his far away homeland of Ithaca but he wasn't there and his attempt to impose his culture upon Poly involved trespassing and theft. Now death by dinner is a horrific punishment for those things, but Odysseus is definitely the invader.

As we have discussed, multiple times on this blog, there is a great deal of difference between writing something historical and writing something fictional. It may not have been "shocking" for the time for the slave women to be murdered, but it was still a creative choice the author made. The fact that it may or may not have fit the time period does not mean that we cannot critique / criticize it.

A great deal of words go into the point that the slave women are being killed for their "disloyalty" of sleeping with the men. This is misogynistic. If male slaves are also killed in the story, their deaths do not erase the misogynistic nature of the text. They just add a new layer of Fail. Two Fails do not cancel each other out.

IMO, the Homer of the Iliad is much more sympathetic to the female slaves than is the Homer of the much more domestic story, the Odyssey.

I wonder if that might be because of the difference in how the men were interacting with the slaves during the war. Achilles would have been, basically, a kid when he went off to war. He would have grown up with the women he knew falling into two categories:1 His mother, who isn't even human.2 Slaves.

If he was going to fall in love with a woman, it was going to have to be a slave. If anything on the Greek side was going to involve women, they were going to be slaves. One would guess that that would result in slaves being thought of in completely different ways during the Trojan War than they were before or after when people were at home. Homer was good enough at characterization that he probably wouldn't miss that even if he did have very unsympathetic views of the slaves he encountered in his daily life.

Good point. Though I have always felt that the Odyssey is a little less understanding of women. It seems like 90% of the women we meet in the Odyssey are obstacles to Odysseus getting back home, and usually of a sinister bent. Of course, I suppose 90% of EVERYTHING in the Odyssey is an obstacle to him getting home, but the women tend to fall into unfortunate stereotypes, iirc.

I think GeniusLemur is talking about what is happening within the story. You're talking about our view from outside. Which is pretty much what you said in your comment of ... um, well, Blogger lists it as "four minutes ago," which isn't going to be very helpful in about, oh a minute or so. Anyway, it's the point about the difference between our understanding of history and our understanding of fiction. I'd just add that, from the story's internal perspective, there are multiple cultures, but the rules of hospitality are absolute: Odysseus is no anthropologist, nor are his men. The men want to leave because they suspect they are in a barbarian place, where the rules don't apply, and besides, giants are scary, not because they're aware that different cultures may have different rules and those rules must be respected. Polyphemus is as bound by the rules of hospitality as any Greek is. That he is inattentive to them just shows that he (and, as we learn, his culture) is wrong, wrong, wrong. From the perspective of the Odyssey.

BTW, the slave women get a voice in Margaret Atwood's Penelopiad. Wonderful book.

But about that, some of the male slaves who cooperated with the suitors are spared because it's recognized that they did so unwillingly. It's Telemachus who insists on executing all the maids who slept with the suitors, and he makes no mention of a possible distinction between those who might have cooperated willingly and those who might not.

Chris the cynic is right that Odysseus acts like a jerk in the Odyssey, and particularly in the Polyphemus episode. I'm not sure Homer intends us to think otherwise. But the jerkitude isn't where a modern writer would put it.

Which is something I probably should have said, but I was mostly thinking it on a scale of, "Well there's Athens and Sparta and Ithaca and Crete over here, and then there's Polyphemus and the other cyclopes way over there. Such that the differences between the cyclopes and Odysseus make the differences between the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians looks small in comparison."

Yes, but I simplified to streamline the post. In both the Iliad and the Odyssey, there are certain baselines that seem to be in place everywhere, and that's what I meant by "ancient greece." For instance, Polyphemus is supposed to be an uncivilized giant living in Sicily, but he acknowledges the same gods as Odysseus and speaks the same language (and remember, the rules of hospitality are at least semi-religious). In the Trojan war, both sides fight using the same tactics and weapons, and nobody ever needs a translator.

Besides, if you want an example of Odysseus being a jerk, look to the story of Palamedes. Odysseus tries to weasel out of going to war by faking insanity, and Palamedes, who was sent to get him, proves he isn't. Later on, during the war, Odysseus frames Palamedes for treason.

The men want to leave because they suspect they are in a barbarian place, where the rules don't apply, and besides, giants are scary, not because they're aware that different cultures may have different rules and those rules must be respected.

I don't exactly disagree with this, but I don't think ... um, how do I say this.

I think that "they suspect they are in a barbarian place, where the rules don't apply," means that "they're aware that different cultures may have different rules," I don't see the two things as in opposition.

I definitely agree that respecting Polyphemus's culture's rules was not on the men's list of things to do, they were afraid and acting in their own self interest. If they'd wanted to respect him and his culture they would have stayed out in the first place until they found out what he thought was ok.

Besides, if you want an example of Odysseus being a jerk, look to the story of Palamedes. Odysseus tries to weasel out of going to war by faking insanity, and Palamedes, who was sent to get him, proves he isn't. Later on, during the war, Odysseus frames Palamedes for treason.

In the tradition I'm familiar with (not going to look it up, because I'm lazy), Palamedes "proves" Odysseus isn't insane by placing his infant son in front of Odysseus' plow. He's basically telling Odysseus that if he wants out of this stupid, pointless, costly war, he'll have to do it by killing his son in front of Palamedes.

I think that "they suspect they are in a barbarian place, where the rules don't apply," means that "they're aware that different cultures may have different rules," I don't see the two things as in opposition.

I don't really grok a difference between those two things either, so you're not alone. "Primitive barbarian culture not like ours" is still a different culture. (And probably less primitive and barbarian when one takes off the privilege googles. I mean, really? His culture is primitive because he doesn't welcome people who have robbed him? There goes all of Texas down the barbarian culture pipe. Not that that's maybe the best counter-example, ha.)

If you want Odysseus being a jerk look to Sophocles. In the Philoctetes he's a complete jerk with basically no redeeming qualities whatsoever. And that's without even having an opportunity to show his misogyny (there are no women on the island where it takes place.)

@Inquisitive Raven - Brilliant! That scene is exactly how it should (and in the real world, would) go down. Since when does anyone (unrelated, not a guardian, not in a capacity of chaperone for an intimate exam, no consent asked of patient for the person to be there, just a random dude) hang around with a patient when they have been brought for medical care? Privacy, confidentiality, farewell, this is Twilight/the Twilight Zone!

Yeah, that's about right, but Palamedes was just doing his job. He was told to bring back Odysseus, and he did. It was Odysseus who wanted out of the solemn oath he took (and the ancient world in general was really big on keeping oaths) because it was personally inconvenient. No one involved in the Trojan war was happy about it, but they'd taken the oath.

I'd compare Homer's Trojan war to World War I: a conflict over a comparatively trivial cause that pulled everyone (mostly unwillingly) in, followed by massive amounts of death and suffering.

That would be another spot that Edward could demonstrate genuine concern/compassion if he actually had any. "Sir, you'll have to leave.""I just want to be sure she's all right.""Sir, you have to leave.""All right. Bella, do you mind if I wait outside for you?"

I'm not sure how to respond to this post. Maybe I'm just cranky today, but you seem to think that you're telling me something I don't already know. I know that Palamedes was following orders; I don't agree with him following an order that was clearly unethical. I know that the generals were following their oaths; I don't agree with them following oaths into a situation that was a vast stupid waste of life. That's my opinion. It may even be the opinion that the oral tradition meant for us to take away, but meh there are good arguments on either side.

The tone you've taken on this subject seems to be kind of a lecturing one -- although, again, this may just be me being in a mood -- and I'm confident saying that most of the people you're engaging with already know quite a bit about the topic. So I'm not sure what you're trying to communicate, my apologies.

Which he surely could have done by just loudly reminding everyone in the vicinity that Odysseus had sworn the oath and then dragging him onto his ship, feigned madness or no feigned madness, in the hope that the prospect of being dragged before all the kings of Greece in such a humiliating way would call Odysseus' bluff. (Also, putting your host's baby son in front of his plough has got to be an abuse of hospitality, whether you think he's mad or not.) Palamedes apparently decided that drama was more important than ethics.

The ancient Greeks may have expected the basic rules of hospitality to be the same around the Mediterranean; the historian Herodotus presents evidence that they were in force in (part of) Egypt at the time of the Trojan war. Basically, when he went around doing research for his book, he visited a particular town in Egypt where local tradition held that Paris and Helen stopped for provisions on the way back to Troy. The local ruler found out who they were, and that they were carrying a bunch of valuables stolen from Menelaus, and proceeded to take both Helen and the valuables into custody until such time as Menelaus could come and get them, and for good measure gave Paris a lecture on how the sacred rule of hospitality isn't just a one-way street.

Then, of course, Herodotus is left with the problem of explaining why the Greeks spent 10 years besieging Troy if they were just out to get Helen back, but he kinda handwaves that by saying the Greeks didn't believe the Trojan protests that she was in Egypt, and pretends not to notice they could easily have sent one or two guys to Egypt to find out. It's one of the frustrating things about Herodotus that he accepts stories like this at face value and never seems to wonder if there might be some larger social or economic reason why a war was fought, or a dynasty fell.

It's been a few months, so correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Herodotus just go with, "This is the story as the Persians tell it, it's not told that way among the Greeks," for that whole section of the Histories? I seem to remember everything on the Trojan War, Medea, and whatshername before that being told in indirect speech. Accusatives and infinitives everywhere, hardly a finite verb to be found.

If so then there's not a lot of reason for him to try to make the story make sense, he's telling the other side's version of it. It's probably better if it has holes.

I think we're saying pretty much the same thing, just from different perspectives. We agree that Odysseus' men recognize that there are different cultures. The immediate cause of Odysseus' problem is a failure of what is sometimes called the sociological imagination: specifically, in this case he takes the rules of his culture as absolute and expects to impose them on someone of another culture. Whew! Glad we don't do that nowadays! [/sarcasm]

I see it has been suggested that the thread has played itself out, and I'm happy to leave it there. (Also, I don't want to get embroiled in L'affaire Palamedes, or, in U.S.mediaspeak, "Palamedesgate.")

(I'm joking, of course. The U.S. media doesn't refer to it at all because (a) "Palamedes" is a foreign person with a foreign (i.e., not English, Irish or Scottish) name and (b) he wasn't sleeping with a Kardashian.)

Did I mention that I got the full "saga" at Half-Price Books, bundled for clearance at $5? It was the only way I would pay for them, but now I get to follow along, and there are a couple of things that struck me about the nurse and the way she's described.

When Bella and Edward enter the office - "The grandmotherly nurse looked up from her novel, astonished, as Edward swung me into the room...."

The 'nodding sagely' in agreement with a student's statements....

Calling Bella "dear" and "honey"....

Bowing to a student's 'authority' about whether he should be allowed in the room ( which has already been discussed per privacy issues & male dominance)....

Item 1: I get the feeling we're supposed to see the nurse as someone who isn't expecting any health issues, ever - 'astonished' at the sight of an ailing student entering a place of medical treatment, really? Startled, maybe even surprised, if she were really engrossed in her book (for some reason, I suspect we're supposed to imply a romance with a lurid cover) but I can't see a realistic reaction as astonished. Then there's the fact that she's allowing herself to become so involved in the book as to be surprised at an interruption - now, I can't say I've never been guilty of reading fiction at work, but never to the point where I let it take my entire concentration.

Items 2 & 4: Edward is apparently so knowledgeable and has such an imposing presence that fully established medical professionals bow to his expertise. There's no reason a licensed, trained nurse should allow any seventeen year old high school student to dictate terms of patient care, regardless of how well-informed he may be; although he might reasonably be expected to have picked up solid first aid skills from his father, he isn't presenting himself as exercising any such skills in his handling of Bella. I get the feeling that he sees the nurse as incompetent, that he knows she doesn't know what to do, and is enjoying her posturing.

Item 3: Without the other cues this would be easy to accept; the nurse is trying to help Bella feel better, make her comfortable, and reassure her that she will be cared for. With the other implications, it just seems to me to present the idea that the nurse is unused to handling medical emergencies, that Edward can read in her mind that she's just 'bustling' around to look busy, and to reinforce her character as a folksy, 'grandmotherly' type - comforting, but ineffectual.

What I was trying to write, and gave up on after reading Inquisitive Raven's re-write (very nice use of HIPAA!) was a scene where the nurse would pick up on the vibes between Edward and Bella, firmly but politely direct him back to class, and then offer Bella some pamphlets on unhealthy relationships and the state hotline number along with the cold washcloth.

I wholeheartedly agree -- or, I should say, I do think Edward sees the nurse as incompetent and I think the text wants us to believe that too, because Edward = Authority. I had to really push back against the cues you pull out in order to get my NO, SHE'S HELPING, YES SHE *IS* interpretation. I'm not sure if that makes it a good deconstruction or a lousy one, but I couldn't bear another incompetent school official. o.O

'astonished' at the sight of an ailing student entering a place of medical treatment, really?

I haven't read these books myself, but the bit you quoted looks to me like the nurse is meant to be astonished at seeing an ailing student being physically carried in by another student, not astonished at seeing an ailing student per se.

Or, perhaps, the nurse is surprised at seeing one student bringing in another student who is in need of attention and nobody has thought to call down and warn her that they're coming. Once she assesses that things are not dire, she calms down some, but it could very well have been that Isabella was coming in with a deep laceration of some sort - she doesn't know because Mr. Banner hasn't called down to say she was coming. He'll probably get an earful for it later, or worse, depending on how much the principal wants to make a point.

"The grandmotherly nurse looked up from her novel, astonished, as Edward swung me into the room...."

IMO, the reason the grandmotherly nurse is astonished is (first) because she doesn't expect to see Bella with Edward, since Edward is out of Bella's league, and (second) because she doesn't expect to see Edward at all, since (despite the report that they all suffer from some ill-defined condition) none of the Cullen kids ever get sick, and thus are total strangers to the nursing station. Edward chuckles because he's aware of the nurse's astonishment and of all the reasons for it, and, also, because he's aware of the many layers of Wrong in which both the nurse and Bella are involved. Edward is privy to insider knowledge, IOW, and his possession of that knowledge causes him to feel smug, which, in turn, causes him to chuckle and preen and to start to boss the nurse around. (This is typical behavior for Edward, who has no doubt been warned many times not to underestimate humans by his father, Carlisle. To no avail.)

S. Meyer's characterization of Edward is consistent and really pretty good, it's just the way both she and Bella instruct us to feel about Edward which boggles the mind. Edward, considered strictly in his capacity as Edward, is almost pathetic, and yet we're supposed to take him seriously as a savior figure and as Bella's vehicle into the transcendence of perpetual youth and infinite money. Not that perpetual youth and infinite money aren't tempting, but Meyer seems to expect us to think what Bella thinks, which is that they're holy. Yikes. Imagine what Carlisle's Dad would have had to say about that...

I just wanted to say that I like/agree with pretty much what everyone said here. I apologize that I don't really have the time/brainpower to add more. Gracious, work and school together can be exhausting, I've realized. LOL!

But, I love you all and keep up the good work! Edward Hate for the WIN!!! :D

Thanks to everyone for the accolades. I'd definitely call it a case of "write what you know."

Lemme put it this way: I got my EMT cert pre-HIPAA which took effect while I was on a medical leave of absence from the fire company. When I came back, they wouldn't let me on the ambulance until I'd passed a test on it.

Presumably, every practicing health care professional in the US at the time had to pass a similar test. Since then, well, if nursing classes are organized anything like my EMT class, legal rights and responsibilities are one of the first things covered, and anyone going into health care in the US would cover HIPAA in that unit. And then there's the paperwork. Anybody who's had any contact with the health care profession in the US since 1996, including patients would have encountered the paperwork if only because the first time one sees a doctor in a new medical system, or gets a prescription at a new pharmacy, one has to sign a document stating that one understands one's privacy rights. If one needs to actually transfer records from one health care provider (or insurer) to another, HIPAA provides for a standardized release form (these kinds of releases existed before HIPAA, but I suspect that they weren't quite so standardized). I find it difficult to believe that Smeyer never dealt with the health care system between 1996 and the time she wrote these novels, yet here Edward completely ignores the confidentiality rules and gets away with it.

Well, I didn't let him get away with it, and I have to say that if the nurse in canon let him get away with it, then his low opinion of her competence is justified.

@Ana: My nurse leaned on the Federal law by way of emphasizing that she didn't invent the rules, she just has to follow them. She's also rather pissed because she's having to waste time on this jerk instead of helping her patient. I also expect that she's going to want to arrange for a special assembly or whatever Forks High does by way of an inservice equivalent in a week or two on How To Behave When Dealing With The Health Care System. Until Edward pulled this stunt, it never occurred to that she might need to. It especially didn't occur to her that a doctor's kid would need that particular lecture. She's also going to have a word with Banner about Edward apparently hijacking Bella from her original escort. Bella's speaking up in that scene is based on the idea that she can speak for herself if she's not looking at Edward's face, and right then she's staring at the ceiling.

Y'know, it occurs to this former EMT that Edward sitting in the nurse's office while she takes Bella's history just might qualify as a HIPAA violation. Which gives the nurse the perfect excuse to kick him out.

Nurse Keefer was taking inventory when the two students arrived, the boy carrying the girl in his arms. "What seems to be the problem here?" she asked.

"She's just a little faint. They're doing blood typing in Biology class." Odd, per Herriot's Law, it was usually a boy who had trouble with the blood typing lab. Still you treat who you get, not who you expect. She nodded.

"There's always one." The boy muffled a snicker, and ignored her glare. "Just lie down, honey; it'll pass," she said, pointing to the cot. She snagged a blanket from a cabinet.

"I know," sighed the girl. Now wait a minute. Patients do not usually know that unless they've either had a lot of these episodes, or extensive first aid training. Keefer didn't remember seeing this young woman before, but there was a new student in school. Best to get a history.

"Does this sort of thing happen a lot?"

"Sometimes," admitted the patient. Behind Keefer, the young man coughed. She spun around and glared at him. She'd expected him to leave as soon as she took charge of the patient.

"You can go back to class now." She told him.

"I'm supposed to stay with her," he said firmly.

"According to who? Mr. Banner?" asked Keefer as she placed the folded blanket under the patient's calves to elevate her legs.

"Yes." He replied.

"Is Mr. Banner, a medical professional?"

"Well, no." he admitted.

"Well, I am, and I have certain rules I have to follow. One of them is protecting the privacy of my patient. Your part in her treatment ended when you delivered her, so unless you're a relative, you should leave this office."

From the cot, the patient said, "He wasn't even in the lab when I started feeling sick. Mr. Banner sent someone else with me."

The boy refused to budge, a smug expression on his face. Something tugged at Keefer's memory. "You're one of Doctor Cullen's kids, right?" He nodded. "Did your dad ever talk to you about patient confidentiality? Do you want me to call the hospital and explain to him that you're violating a patient's privacy rights? Do you want me to interrupt him at work, so he can explain the Federal rules regarding such matters?"

With the question about confidentiality, the smug look vanished. When she started talking about calling Dr. Cullen, he started to slump. "No, ma'am."

"Then get out of here. And if you ever accompany a patient in here again, you're to leave as soon as you've delivered your report. Clear?"

"As crystal," he muttered, then slouched out of the office.

She closed the door behind him, and turned to her patient,"Right, now that he'd gone, how are you feeling, and can you explain when this has happened before?" She got out her clipboard and started taking notes.

Of course, the poor nurse doesn't know there's no such thing as confidentiality where Edward's concerned, and she thinks he's a 17 year old kid and therefore not medically qualified. OTOH, Edward knows she's telling the truth about the rules, and even if she's bluffing about calling his father, he has to act like he doesn't know that if he doesn't want to blow his cover. I figure she's pissed enough at him to at least leave a message for Doctor Cullen explaining what his son's been doing.

One thing that probably is worth noting is that Homer didn't just make stuff up. We don't know what came before Homer because it doesn't survive, but he was almost certainly working with oral traditions. The fact that Odysseus came back all alone, for example, was probably a part of the oral tradition and thus probably something that Homer had to have if he was going to avoid having people say, "I'm telling you, you're messing up the story, now get it right!" to him. So he deals with that by saying that the men brought it on themselves (the schmucks.) Of course, for all we know that was part of the oral tradition too.

Somehow I doubt that, "He killed all the disloyal female slaves, and by disloyal I mean they had sex with the big scary armed men," was an integral unavoidable part of the oral tradition so it doesn't really apply here, but in general it is worth pointing out because what Homer was doing shared some elements with writing history. And we've discussed before how a lot of what we have from the Ancient Greeks resembles fan fiction in the way it was made (though then we were talking about tragedies.)

Startled, maybe even surprised, if she were really engrossed in her book (for some reason, I suspect we're supposed to imply a romance with a lurid cover) but I can't see a realistic reaction as astonished.

And now, for some reason, I really want the nurse to have been reading ATLAS SHRUGGED. Her astonishment would stem from the expectation that she would contribute to the degradation of society by enabling the parasitical neediness of the weak.

If she were an admirer of Ayn Rand, it would also explain her deference to Edward. the very acme of the angular, hard-edged domineering male sociopath.

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